The 2023 winner is 'Time off Travellers' by David Peach
Highly Commended - Russell Simmons' chapter on Suicide Prevention in The Institution of Structural Engineers Car Park Design Guide
Read the winning entry here
The Ernest Davies Award is a prestigious award for Advancing Parking Knowledge.
Every year the BPA celebrates parking sector voices with the Ernest Davies Award competition inviting entries about any aspect of the parking world. Most entries are written but they can also be film or audio. The competition attracts entries from people who get into that creative space and write something about the parking sector that interests them. Winners and runners-up in recent years have written about positive parking, workplace violence, the digitisation of TROs, suicide prevention, lithium-ion batteries and the need for an independent regulator for enforcement agents.
Are your creative talents yet to be recognised?
Why not get into a creative space and enter this prestigious competition? It doesn’t need to be overly technical, it could be humorous or innovative and be a team effort with colleagues. It must benefit the parking sector in some way, raise its profile, help to share knowledge or experience and provide an opportunity for others to learn about parking. It could be a reflective piece, a prediction, a case study, a call to action, or research you’ve done. Is there something you find concerning, fascinating or even funny about the parking sector?
Who is Ernest Davies?
Ernest Davies was a BPA founder member who served as treasurer, secretary and president in his time up until 1979. He was a journalist by profession and also had a long career as a politician from 1945, eventually becoming a junior minister. He died aged 89 in 1991 and the award was started in 1994 in his memory. The award was initially set up to encourage younger members to speak and write on any aspect of parking and now it is open to everyone, both BPA and non-BPA members.
What can I enter?
As long as it is advancing the knowledge of parking in some way it could be something that is written, or recorded on film or as an audio. For example, it could be a: blog, article, poem, case study, reflective piece, film recording or audio recording
It could be humorous, informative, technical or innovative, as long as it is authored by you or a team of colleagues and not done in the course of your work. We ask only that it aims to benefit the parking profession. If you have written something in the course of your work, which would not be eligible, you could use it as the basis of a reflective piece for example.
Additional criteria
If you’re passionate about parking, transport and traffic management and have something to say about it - we love to receive entries from you. However entries that promote a service or product, or are written by a professional journalist are not eligible.
Full criteria for entries
How is the award judged?
The judges mark each entry on style, content, value to the sector and originality/creativity.
The judging panel includes the editor of Parking News, the Chair or another member of the Public Affairs and Communications Board, the current Vice President, a council member and a BPA director. The judges' decision is final. If the judges cannot agree on a winner, their comments and resulting recommendations will be put to the Chair (or another member) of the Public Affairs and Research Board to make the final decision.
What do the winner and highly commended receive?
The winner receives an engraved trophy and a certificate and has their piece published in Parking News. The highly commended recipient receives a certificate. If you are crowned the winner you will be able to say you are an award-winning parking professional!
2022 Winner
Winner - Jamie Ashford with 'WoMEN in Parking, from a male perspective'
Highly commended - Douglas Blackwell with 'The Future of Parking'.
See the Ernest Davies Award's previous winners here.
Ernest Davies
Journalist and politician 1902-91
Ernest Davies was listed on 20 April 1970 as one of the subscribers to the British Parking Association Memorandum and Articles of Association. He and the late Kenneth Bloom were major figures in the founding and subsequent operation of the British Parking Association.
Ernest became Secretary and seminar organiser and general factotum, running the Association from his Newman Street office in London. The Parking Newsletter, edited by Keith Lumley at that time, was published from that address.
Ernest was BPA President from 1977 until 1980 when he was elected to Honorary Membership of the British Parking Association. His awareness of political and planning trends, together with his many contacts proved immensely valuable to the Association.
Previous to this he was the founder and publisher of the journal Traffic Engineering and Control and editor from its first issue in 1960 - 1976. It was he who recognised the opportunity for a dedicated publication on the relative infant discipline of Traffic Engineering over 50 years ago in the UK. Through the vigour of his early stewardship, the journal bravely ventured as an independent initiative and earned its international reputation.
Ernest's early career was in journalism and publishing. As a young man in the early 1920's he travelled to the United States and found work on the New York Globe and on local papers in Massachusetts. Twenty years later, during the Second World War, he travelled widely in the UK, working for the BBC and eventually becoming its North American Service Organiser. In 1929 he helped resuscitate a Socialist monthly, The Clarion, co-edited it for three years and wrote a regular column.
Ernest's political career was unsuccessful at the 1935 General Election, but his political writing continued. The State of the Railway (1940) was one of several pamphlets written for the Labour Party and the Fabian Society on the nationalisation of transport and future structure and policy, advocating, in particular, the need for an overall transport policy. In 1945 he became the MP for Enfield Division of Middlesex, and almost immediately was invited to be Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party's Transport Group which he held from 1945 to 1950 and again from 1951 to 1959.
Ernest recognised the most exciting period of his political career as being his service from 1950 to 1951, as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office, Deputy first to Ernest Bevan and afterwards to Herbert Morrison. He was also a member of the UK delegation to the United Nations General Assemblies from 1947 to 1949 and to the Geneva Conference of the Freedom of Information and the Press in 1948.
He represented the Government at the Four Power Agenda Talks in Paris in 1951, where his opposite number from the Soviet Union was an intransigent Mr. Grimy. Happier were his meetings with Marshal Tito - Ernest's friendship with Yugoslavia was cemented by his being Chairman of the British Yugoslav Society from 1957 to 1980, and its Vice President 1980 - 1991.